Economic Determinism

There's this post on Breakthrough Gen Blog from June that I found today that is good, although I don't get the title. It's on Marx and why leftists have been so negative lately.

But Marx was different than the later critical theorists because in addition to a critical viewpoint he espoused a modernization theory known as economic determinism. Economic determinism holds that the political, social, and cultural products of a society are products of its economic structure. According to this theory, it is foolish to try to change society through new forms of art or new political alliance, because these are epiphenomenal occurrences, caused at the root by the economic reality underneath them. In its most extreme form, economic determinism posits total determinism: we can do nothing to change the fates of our societies, and, for Marx, their eventual transition for communism.

What is interesting is that my parents (and consensus amongst many mainland Chinese) is that Communism in China failed because Mao tried to skip the natural development of the economy and capitalism to go directly to communism. To them, it proved that Marx was right about economic determinism.

Now, the Breakthrough Institute is promoting again the idea that people are most generous if they are themselves well-off and thus environmentalism needs to work towards improving people's lives. This is also interesting because mainland China right now is probably much more receptive to this idea than the American public. They can immediately and intuitively grasp it whereas it's going to take some time for the American public and especially the traditional environmentalists to come around.

Environmentalism is Still Dead

Teryn Norris of the BreakThrough Institute wrote a post Environmentalism is Still Dead, criticizing environmentalists' stubbornness in opposing Pelosi's energy bill because it included approving limited off-shore drilling. I completely agree with Teryn.

I wrote this comment

Environmentalism is dead. Long live Environmentalism.

It seems to me that we need to figure out a way to distinguish “greens” from pro-sustainability pragmatists who also sometimes call ourselves green. Calling greens “idealists” is too general and to some extent, we are all idealists. Other labels don’t really work, either. But we don’t want the message to be anti-green. Unless we do, and we need to call the new environmentalism something else.

I find that sustainability is more descriptive of the new brand of environmentalism, and it is already becoming the new “it”. But I’m not sure what color it is. Maybe it should be the letter S. The new environmentalist group at MIT is sustainability@MIT, and it is a merger of a few of the old groups. There is also S-labs (sustainability labs), which is a class in the Sloan School of Management at MIT.

It would just be nice for there to be a distinction between the old approach and the new approach. Or else it seems like we are arguing with ourselves.

NPR

NPR.org is not actually that good. But the websites for the individual radio programs on NPR are pretty good. I especially like On Point. Although usually I listen to Morning Edition and All Things Considered. WBUR also has local stuff sometimes that's good. WBUR has Marketplace, which has a pretty nice website, haha, but it's also pretty interesting. I think my favorite part is getting to know all the guests, the who's who of important, smart, and powerful people.

WBUR's schedule

American Bailout Plan

It would only be truly American if the people who made the biggest mistakes to get bailed out, while it's controversial to suggest that they should at least take a pay cut? If you haven't heard, Paulson is requesting $700 billion to bail out whoever they feel like on Wall Street, which is mostly fine since the alternative is probably worse, and the final cost should be much less than $700 billion. Some members of Congress are pushing for a cap on executives' pay so that they can't make millions of dollar while getting bailed out by taxpayers at the same time. I guess once you're rich and powerful enough, you never need to suffer the consequences of your mistakes anymore. Cool.

Related is this story about a conflict of interest regarding the bailout. In fact, Newt Gingrich brings this up during his interview, and for once I agree with him.

Campaign and the Media

This is cool event, but I won't be able to go. Boo.

And I even know who Marc Ambinder is.

Demotion

Goldman and Morgan to be real banks?

whoa

Presidential Debate

The first one is this upcoming Friday, September 26! Starts at 9pm. It's at the University of Mississippi, and the focus will be on foreign policy. This is supposed to be McCain's strong point.

What I hope is that it becomes clear that McCain is just a military man and as such, most of his solutions are military solutions. His father was an important general during WWII and was a prominent and steadfast supporter of the Vietnam War. He believes in the importance of "winning" a war and does not believe in negotiations since they are inevitably messy. Well, the problem is that with every conflict, solutions are messy. That's what politicians are for.

Another thing is that I hope it becomes clear that if anyone is elitist from an elite background, it is McCain. He was the son of a general who was always meant to become important. His family mingled with the rich and powerful. His status meant that he didn't have to be a good student and he wasn't. Because of his importance, the Vietcong supposedly was extra harsh towards him during his capture. When he returned, he received a hero's welcome, and it was extra poignant because he was his father's son.

SMV

Bass supergroup

i think i like it

Letter to the Editor

The DNC asked for letters to the editor concerning the McCain economy. So I wrote one. I have no idea if it will be published (esp. since I submitted it the day before the market crash); I assume not. But here it is:

As any other American today, I worry about our economy. For almost a decade, the American economy has been treading downhill, with no hint of a better future. And, like most Americans, I have little knowledge in the way of economics. Anyone who doesn't have a full grasp on the American economy must make their choice for president based on both what's been said and done in the past and what's proposed for the future. Senator McCain the maverick has not earned my trust. His economic advisor, Phil Gramm, likened our economic turmoil to mental depression, calling it "a mental recession". Americans deserve better than to be treated as though they weren't working hard enough to produce a more robust economy, as though all their hardships were just a fantastic fable, or a pretense for the government to allow them to be lazy. The McCain campaign continues to pretend that our economy is prosperous and strong. Could he be more blind? The reality is clear: McCain's economic stance is the same as that of President Bush; neither of them knows how to fix this mess. On the brighter side, Obama's Senate record shows he cares about working Americans, and knows how to improve the economy. He has never blamed the Americans for not working hard enough, and instead, continually offers his empathy for their struggles, since he knows the Bush economic policies are doomed to fail. He proposes to pass a middle class tax cut, raise the minimum wage, and offer tax breaks to students struggling to pay for college. What has McCain proposed? Only more of the same. The choice is clear if your concern is the economy: Obama-Biden '08.

Offshore Oil

It seems to be common knowledge among economists/analysts that opening the restricted offshore areas for oil drilling will only reduce the price of gas by a few cents and not for at least 7 years (although this is certainly not common knowledge among the American populace).

Here's a good graph for scale:



This chart is based on estimates from the Energy Information Administration.